Deepak Chopra Peace Meditation Friday, August 8, 2014

Spiritual health advocate and author Deepak Chopra is attempting to set the Guinness World Record for the largest meditation during the Seduction of Spirit retreat in Toronto. Thanks to Julie.

Chopra has long touted the many personal benefits of meditation. Now, he’s hoping to set a Guinness World Record for the largest collective meditation.

Chopra will be leading the record-breaking attempt from Toronto, where he is attending his biannual seven-day meditation gathering.

On Friday, Aug. 8 at noon EDT (go to the website your location’s time), Chopra wants to bring together retreat participants with thousands more participants online for a collective meditation. Participants can log in online to watch alive stream of the guided meditation which will feature a performance by Indie Arie.

In order to break the world record, at least 15,000 people need to participate, but organizers say that shouldn’t be a problem: 40,000 have already registered to take part online.

The event is being called the Global Meditation for Peace, and Chopra says the idea is to harness the power of a collective focus on the same goal.

“What we hope is to create that critical mass of peace consciousness,” he told CTV’s Canada AM Tuesday. With so many conflicts dominating headlines recently, Chopra says the aim of the meditation is to promote peace in the same way that Mahatma Gandhi encouraged others to “be the change that you wish to see” in the world.

“So if you want love in the world, you have to be loving. If you want peace in the world, you have to be peaceful,” he said.

Chopra, a former physician, says he believes in the health and well-being benefits of meditating alone, but that gathering together to meditate is even more powerful.

“There is scientific data that if a group of people meditate — even a group of two together — the effects are magnified. And you can see that on brainwaves on EEG. So yes, it can be private but it can also be collective,” he said.

The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, which Chopra co-founded in 1996 in California, says it selected Toronto to host the Global Meditation “based on the strong connection Torontonians have to both meditation and yoga.”